| Summary: | Due to the sensitivity of high latitude regions to global climate change, it is important to understand the role and response of the arctic environment to past climatic events. Lacustrine sediments can provide a useful archive of past environmental change preserved in structural, textural, and compositional variation. Linnévatnet, a large proglacial lake on Svalbard in the Norwegian High Arctic, contains a long record of annually laminated (varved) sediments. This study provides a high resolution sedimentation chronology from the lamination stratigraphy since 1963. Sediment cores were retrieved during fieldwork conducted in 2006 from sites along two transects. Using digital imagesof continuous thin sections, annual sediment couplets and intra-annual deposition laminae were identified. Laminae were visually correlated from proximal to distal coring sites and down to the depth of a 1963 137-Cs age (~20cm). The data indicate a complex sedimentary environment across the basin affecting varve formation. Preliminary comparisons to temperature and precipitation records from Longyearbyen suggest a relationship between laminae thickness and precipitation. The sediment record in Linnévatnet may potentially contains a high resolution proxy for changing climatic and glacial conditions of Svalbard during the late Holocene.
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